Well, they sent me back the motherboard after determining that it was working. Apparently I had to wait until it stopped ranting about the CPU failure and wait to be able to go into CMOS. Apparently the video doesn’t turn on right away, so I never saw it. I was too afraid I was going to fry something.
Well, now its in and it is sweet. Athlon XP 1800+ (best price at the time), 512MB of 333Mhz DDR memory, GeForce 4 440 video, 6 channel sound. Jedi Knight 2 Rocks on this baby!
Well, despite my aborted attempt to upgrade my hardware, I went ahead and installed Windows XP Home on the system anyways since the WinME stuff had so much cruft from crashes. Hey, this has actually improved the system! It boots faster, has user profiles, supports NTFS, etc. The one problem – you have to “activate” it within 30 days, and it is somehow tied to your hardware. So I have to wait to activate it until the replacement motherboard arrives. Nothing is disabled yet, but after 30 days you can’t do anything, and it nags you…
So, I was going to upgrade my casual/gaming system, because the PIII motherboard was never all that stable. So I ordered a nice new Asus Athlon motherboard with 4 USB2 ports, 333Mhz DDR memory, etc. Wouldn’t you know it, the motherboard was DOA? Perhaps I’ve been lucky with all the systems I’ve built – I built a dual-Athlon MP server most recently with an Asus motherboard – but this is the first one that I had a defective part. Continue reading
